1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image extracting apparatus which extracts a sequence of images serially captured, a point where a scene transition occurs in an image sequence of dynamic image frames, a valid image, and the like, an image extraction program which can be provided as a computer program product, and an image extracting method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been known an image extracting apparatus which extracts an image where a scene transition occurs in an image sequence of dynamic images or the like (the image is referred below as “scene transition image”). With the image extracting apparatus, a user checks a predetermined number of extracted scene transition images. The user can roughly understand general contents of the entire image sequence in a short time without checking all images in the image sequence, and can easily identify a desired scene or a desired image (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-54055).
Further, according to another conventionally known image extracting apparatus, key frames are extracted as images indicating the contents of a scene from a group of images arranged between scene transition frames in a sequence of dynamic images. Then, an extraction condition for extracting the key frames is changed based on image information of images selected by the user, and key frames are re-extracted (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-217045, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-217046).